Key Concepts: Dual-Process Theory, Heuristics and Biases

Abstract

This chapter introduces key concepts from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow and elaborates on them using examples from Shakespeare’s plays. The key insight is that human thinking is driven primarily by intuition rather than by reasoning — and that people use heuristics (mental short cuts) to lean on and confirm their intuition and to avoid the mental effort required for cognitive reasoning wherever possible — and so the way that people think (as opposed to what they think) is universal.